What is This For?

Leadership, Shared Purpose, and the Shalom of Christ

A meeting can go remarkably well. The agenda is completed, reports are received, decisions are made, and everyone does what they were assigned to do. By almost every conventional measure, the meeting was successful.

And yet, when the meeting ends, an important question can remain unanswered: What did all of that work actually serve?

One of the quiet dangers of leadership is becoming very good at work whose larger purpose we have stopped asking about. Healthy communities need agendas, policies, committees, reports, and clearly defined responsibilities. Good administration can itself be an act of faithful stewardship. But faithful activity is not always the same thing as faithful direction.

We can complete every task and still become fragmented. We can maintain every structure and still lose sight of why the structure exists. Christian leadership therefore requires more than asking whether we have done our work well. It also asks whether our work is helping people, churches, and communities live more fully into the shalom of Christ.

More Than Doing Our Part

Paul describes the church in Ephesians 4:15–16 as a body growing toward Christ, joined and held together as each part does its work. Every part matters, and every part has a contribution to make. But no part exists simply to perform its own function. Each part contributes to the growth of the whole.

That distinction matters. It is possible for every person to stay in their lane and still have no common destination. It is possible for every committee to fulfill its responsibilities while the larger community becomes increasingly disconnected. A group can become excellent at maintaining its particular corner of an organization without understanding how its work contributes to the life of the whole.

For Christian leaders, then, the question cannot end with “Did I do my part?” We also have to ask how our part contributes to what God is forming among us.

The Shalom of Christ

One way of naming that larger purpose is the shalom of Christ.

Shalom means more than peace in the sense of avoiding conflict. It points toward wholeness: life rightly ordered in relationship with God, with one another, within ourselves, and within the communities we inhabit. The shalom of Christ includes reconciliation, justice, belonging, healing, flourishing, and peace.

This is not simply a vision of everyone getting along. Sometimes reconciliation requires difficult conversations. Justice can disturb a comfortable peace. Growth can require change, courage, confession, and even grief. Shalom is the deeper wholeness that comes as life is increasingly ordered toward the purposes of God.

That gives Christian leadership a horizon larger than institutional survival. We do not maintain organizations simply so that organizations can continue to exist. We organize, teach, administer, gather, decide, spend, communicate, worship, and serve because through these things we hope to participate in what God is doing in the world.

Our structures matter because of what they make possible, and our work should somehow contribute to the shalom of Christ.

Shared Purpose Changes the Work

When a community understands what its work is for, individual responsibilities do not disappear. Instead, they become connected to a larger purpose.

A financial report is not simply a collection of numbers; it can help a community steward its resources toward mission. A policy is not merely a set of rules; it can help create conditions in which people are treated fairly and ministry can flourish. Leadership development is not merely about filling vacancies; it can cultivate people prepared to serve with wisdom, courage, and faithfulness.

Shared purpose also helps us discern what not to do. Not every good idea belongs to us, and not every inherited practice continues to produce the fruit it once did. When purpose is unclear, activity itself can become our measure of faithfulness: we keep doing something because it is what we do.

A better question is whether what we are doing still helps us move toward the shalom of Christ.

Faithfulness Has a Season

Shared purpose does not mean that every community should be doing the same thing at the same time. Organizations, like people, move through seasons. There are seasons for building and seasons for simplifying, seasons for expansion and seasons for consolidation, seasons for action and seasons for listening.

A community preparing for significant change may need to limit activity in order to create space for discernment. Another community may need to experiment, strengthen relationships, or cultivate readiness before deeper change is possible. A healthy organization may be called to expand a ministry, while a weary or fragmented one may first need to recover trust and clarity. The larger purpose can remain the same even when the faithful response changes.

This is why Christian leadership must ask not only “What is this for?” but also “What season are we in?” An action that produced good fruit five years ago may no longer be what is needed now. Conversely, a period that appears less productive may be deeply faithful if it creates the space necessary for healing, listening, reorganization, or renewal.

Sabbath provides an important biblical image. Sabbath is not the abandonment of God’s purposes. It is a different way of participating in them. Sometimes the faithful act is not to produce more, but to stop long enough to remember who we are, what God has entrusted to us, and what should come next.

Faithfulness is therefore not always measured by increased activity. Sometimes faithfulness looks like building; sometimes it looks like pruning. Sometimes it looks like experimenting; sometimes it looks like waiting. The question is whether the response is appropriate to the season and whether it helps move the community toward the shalom of Christ.

From Activity to Fruit

Activity is relatively easy to measure. We can ask whether we held the meeting, completed the report, approved the policy, filled the position, or finished the project. Those measures matter, but Christian leadership requires another question: What fruit did we hope this work would produce?

The fruit may appear in people who become more courageous, faithful, equipped, or connected. It may appear in churches that develop healthier relationships, clearer purpose, deeper discipleship, or greater capacity for ministry. It may appear in communities where neighbors experience greater belonging, reconciliation, justice, hospitality, healing, or hope.

The fruit may also look different depending upon the season. In one season, faithfulness may produce growth and expansion. In another, the needed fruit may be clarity, trust, healing, simplification, or readiness for what comes next.

Not all fruit can be easily measured, and some of the most important changes happen slowly. Still, naming the fruit we hope for changes the way we understand our work. Instead of asking only whether we completed something, we begin asking what we are hoping God will cultivate through it.

Four Questions for Faithful Work

Before beginning a new program, continuing an old practice, making an important decision, or simply moving through an ordinary agenda, Christian leaders can ask four questions.

What is this for? What larger purpose does this meeting, program, ministry, policy, or decision serve?

What season are we in? Are we called to build, simplify, listen, experiment, heal, reorganize, deepen, or wait? What does this particular moment require of us?

What fruit is appropriate in this season? What do we hope will become different in people, churches, or communities because of this work?

How does that fruit contribute to the shalom of Christ? Does this work deepen wholeness, strengthen relationships, foster justice and reconciliation, create belonging, nurture faithfulness, or contribute to flourishing?

These questions will not make every decision easy. They may reveal that some work has become disconnected from its original purpose. They may also help us recognize the deeper importance of work that appears ordinary, quiet, or even less productive by conventional measures. Most importantly, they remind us why we are working in the first place.

Christian leadership is about more than completing tasks or preserving structures. We are participating together in something larger than any one person’s responsibility, any one committee’s assignment, or any one organization’s structure. We are seeking the shalom of Christ, and sometimes the most important leadership question we can ask is also the simplest: What is this for?

Scripture

Discussion Questions

1. Where are we doing good and necessary work but may have lost clarity about what that work is ultimately for?

2. What season do you believe your church, organization, or ministry is currently in? What makes you say that?

3. What fruit is most important in this season? Is the needed fruit growth, trust, healing, clarity, simplification, readiness, deeper relationships, or something else?

4. Are there activities or practices that deserve to be reconsidered because they fit a previous season better than the one we are in now?

5. What might change if we regularly asked: What is this for? What season are we in? What fruit is appropriate now? How does that fruit contribute to the shalom of Christ?

Continue the conversation

This article inspired What Is This For? — six monthly conversations for committees and teams. Explore the series for Scripture, shared questions, and one manageable practice to carry into your ministry together.

Acknowledgment

This article and its conversation were influenced by the wisdom shared by the Presbytery of the Western Reserve (PWR) staff in September 2026: Judy Mitchell, Stated Clerk; Laura VanDale, Associate for Justice Ministries; and Josh Daum, Presbytery Operations Manager. With gratitude for their insight, questions, and ministry alongside Matthew J. Skolnik, the author of this collection.